


Old Winchester Proverb

by TaraSoleil



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baker Castiel, Dean hates witches for very good reasons, Fluff, He also hates glitter, He still loves pie, Hoodoo Love Wammie, Human Castiel, Hunter Winchesters, M/M, a touch of humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 05:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSoleil/pseuds/TaraSoleil
Summary: Things Dean hates without exception: witches, glitter, dogs in the car.Things Dean loves beyond reason: Sam, pie, possibly the dude making said pie.Or the one-shot in which a hoodoo love spell makes Dean rethink a few things about himself.





	Old Winchester Proverb

As Dean dropped into the driver’s seat of his car, glitter rained down from his hair, falling onto his shoulders and the upholstery, working its way into the cracks in the vinyl. He glared down at the miniscule specks of sparling plastic, knowing he was going to be finding that crap for months.

“I don’t care how _not_ evil they are,” he growled. “The next time I see a white witch, I’m ganking Glinda.”

His brother laughed from the passenger seat. Unlike Dean, Sam had escaped their encounter with Madame Celeste without a faceful of good intention.

“Shut it,” Dean spat. So what if he was sarcastic and ‘rough around the edges’? He was a grown-ass man. He didn’t need some old crackpot making adjustments to his life. He didn’t need a spell thrown at him without warning or his consent -- particularly not one that involved glitter. He definitely didn’t need ‘true love’.

“What? You don’t want to find someone to ‘polish your imperfections until you shine’?” Sam snorted, quoting the old dingbat.

“When any part of me needs polishing, I know exactly where to go,” he insisted.

“More information than I need.”

“Then talk about the next case.”

Still smiling, he pulled his laptop from the footwell and typed a rhythm against the keys. After a minute of that passive-aggressive polka beat, Sam started summarizing the contents of three articles from the _Hartford Courant_ , “Four dead. Presumed animal attacks. Hearts missing. No leads. Bear suspected.”

“Bear my ass. Either that’s a werewolf or I’m swearing off pie for life.” At his brother’s quiet laugh, he turned his eyes from the road, demanding, “What?”

Sam shook his head and laughed again. “I was just thinking that casting a spell to help you find your true love was a waste of time.”

“Why?”

“Because the one true love of your life will always be _pie_.”

A frown tugged at his mouth as he considered his brother’s words. “I do love pie.”

“So are we heading to Connecticut or do you need to go hunt down the love of your life and eat yourself into a food coma?”

“I can’t do both?”

“Jerk,” Sam muttered.

Dean grinned. “It’s part of my charm, bitch.”

He slapped his brother’s fingers away from the radio controls and pointed the Impala North on I-95. Their unfortunate encounter with Madame Celeste in Wilmington put them a solid five states away, but with clear roads and minimal pit stops, they would be in Hartford by morning. That suited him just fine. Any hope he had of passing for a Fed would depend on him grabbing a shower before donning his disguise. No self-respecting FBI agent approached a murder scene or morgue looking like he’d been attacked by a PCP-crazed stripper. Shower, breakfast, coffee, case. It was a good plan. One Dean heartily approved of, yet he hit the indicator and started pulling toward the exit three states too soon.

“Pit stop?” Sam questioned, craning his neck to check the level on the gas gauge.

“Uh, yeah,” he agree, though he truthfully couldn’t explain why he thought it necessary to leave the highway. They didn’t need fuel. He didn’t need a toilet or to stretch his legs. Sammy hadn’t complained about wanting a break from the car. Still, he had to take that exit. He needed to. He felt drawn to it.

“Dude, you just passed the only gas station there is.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” he said, but that didn’t stop him from pressing down on the accelerator just a bit harder.

“What’s going on?”

“I have no idea.”

Sam was silent for a moment. When he spoke, he was not the nerdy font of helpful information Dean had hoped for. “Do you think this might be Madam Celeste’s spell?”

He picked more of the glitter from his hair as he continued to drive toward points unknown. “Better not be. I don’t have time for this.”

“You don’t have time for love? That’s just sad, Dean.”

“You can shut your piehole,” he snapped and felt a pang in his gut. “I want pie.”

“You always want pie.”

“Not like this,” he insisted. It was the truth. He always had a low-key hankering for a good slice of pie, but this was a burning need to smell the warm, sweet aroma of a pie in the oven, to hold the golden brown confection in his hands, to be the first and only one to bite into it.

At a junction no more unique than the last eight they had driven through, Dean took a right. At the next, he turned left. It was late when they pulled into the small town fifty miles from the highway. The welcome sign read _Silver Bell_. It also informed them that the population was a staggering one thousand twenty-seven people and that the town was home to the best pie in the state for five years running.

“Uh, dude,” Sam breathed. “I was only joking about pie being the love of your life. You know that, right?”

“What? You think I keep a list in my head of where to find the best pie in every state? I didn’t know this was here!” he insisted as he maneuvered the car confidently through the narrow streets. Within three minutes of crossing the town line, Dean had them in front of a small, freestanding, red-brick building in the heart of the Silver Bell, Pennsylvania.

They leaned forward to read the hand-painted letters above the door through the windshield.

“Cassie’s Pie and Coffee Shop,” Dean muttered.

“It’s closing in five minutes. You better hurry if you want to meet the love of your life.”

“Screw you,” he grumbled, fully intent of starting the car and backing away from this strange fluke. Instead, he was opening the door and exiting the Impala; his feet were carrying him across the sidewalk and through the blue door.

The smell that hit him was not the one he had yearned for. It was nice. Homey even. There was sweetness and spice and an entire orchard of fruit smells, but it was almost a stale kind of aroma. It was the leftovers. The residue. It was disappointing is what it was. Also disappointing was how little pie there actually was to be had. So close to the end of the day, he really shouldn’t have been surprised. The last of the inventory was probably stashed away in an industrial fridge in the back or had been boxed up to be taken home by the employees.

Make that the employee. Singular. A lone woman, plump and somewhere between sixty and a very well-preserved seventy years old. She was wiping the tables and stacking the chairs but paused when the bell announced his arrival.

“Well, hello.” She smiled a greeting, her mouth a row of perfectly white, straight artificial teeth. “You made it just in time.”

“Yeah, needed pie.”

“Best pie in the whole state.” The woman beamed with so much pride he knew she had to be Cassie. “Why don’t I just make you up a box to tide you over until tomorrow, hm?” She hurried to collect the last few slices on offer, handing the plain, white box over the counter to him.

“What do I owe you?”

“For that? Nothing. I was going to have to throw it in the trash anyway. At least this way it won’t go to waste. We open bright and early tomorrow morning. Seven o’clock,” Cassie offered him a wink that would have been creepy if she wasn’t the very picture of a storybook grandmother.

“Well, thanks,” Dean said, turning to leave.

Years of living the hunter’s life has given him a rather unhealthy attitude toward strangers, particularly generous ones. He half expected the box in his hands to explode the second he was out the door. Instead, the ‘open’ sign was turned around on the door and the lock clicked into place. It was just a store. A store in a small town miles from anywhere important. It was not a hotbed of demon activity. It was not a beacon drawing him in. It was just a store.

As he slide back into the driver’s seat, Sam considered him and the box still clutched in his hands. “So? Meet the love of your life?”

“I’ll know once we find a place to crash,” he replied, stealing one last whiff of the sweet scent clinging to the box before setting it down in the backseat with far more care than it really needed.

“Crash? What about the werewolf?”

“We have four more nights until the full moon. We can afford to sleep, grab some fresh pie in the morning, and then hit the road.” It was a reasonable suggestion. There really was no rush. The werewolf wouldn’t show itself while the moon was still in gibbous. Until then the best they could hope for would be to interview the next of kin and Hartford’s finest for any clues or patterns. One day wouldn’t put a dent in that plan of attack. Approaching the subjects well-rested would make the job easier anyway.

Sam studied him, giving him that look he always wore when he knew for fact he was being lied to. He sounded cautious when he answered, “Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

“Okay. Find us a motel.”

What he found was a place where someone had thrown their grandmother’s collection of fine yarn art. Everything from the headboard to the picture frames was coated in cable stitches and every type of wool ever produced. Even the freaking telephone had a knitted cozy around it like it was a freaking teapot. If he didn’t have fresh pie to look forward to in the morning, Dean would have been sleeping in the Impala on the side of the road.

“Well, this is cozy. And by cozy, I mean creepy.”

“It’s the only motel for miles. This isn’t exactly a tourist hotspot, Dean,” Sam said in his own defense.

“Are you kidding? With the state’s best pie on offer just down the road? How is this not a resort town?” he snorted, throwing the lid open and eying the leftovers Cassie had boxed for him. “Blueberry, peach, or strawberry rhubarb?”

“Peach.”

“How are we even related?” he questioned but shoveled the slice onto a paper towel and pushed it across the table, watching as Sam dug into the pie and froze.

“Dude! This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” Sam groaned and tore into the rest without stopping to breathe. Before he even swallowed the last bite of crust, he was reaching for the strawberry rhubarb. Dean could have stopped him, snatched the box away or slapped his hand aside. He could have eaten the remaining pie just as fast and kept his brother from having the chance to eat another bite, but he didn’t. He loved pie, but he knew that these scraps left at the end of the day would pale in comparison to the fresh, delicious slices that would be on offer the next morning. That was what he wanted, what was waiting for him in that cafe. The real thing.

Sam had polished off the entire box before he realized he was the only one eating. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Dean pushed the words away.

“Don’t worry about it, Sammy. Plenty more where that came from.”

His brother watched him for a few minutes as they moved through the room throwing salt on the windowsill and stashing guns within easy reach. They would only be there one night, but no one ever got hurt by playing it safe. When it was obvious Dean had no intention of mentioning him eating all the pie, Sam retreated to the bathroom and into the shower. Twenty minutes later, Dean did the same. With no evidence to discuss other than the newspaper articles they’d already reviewed, there was no reason to stay up any later than they already had. An early bedtime was a rarity in their line of work, and they both did their best to enjoy it. PTSD Hell nightmares and all.

The alarm went off at seven, a courtesy from some former guest that had Dean cursing and slapping at the yarn-encrusted clock on the table. Wherever the off switch was, it was too protected by the inexplicable cozy to actually do its job. But, really, there was nothing a well-placed knife couldn’t solve, and the alarm soon quieted.

“Too early for pie?” Sam asked in a sleepy slur.

Dean didn’t answer. He just took up his pile of clothes and went to change. The sooner he got a fresh piece of pie, the sooner they could get the hell out of this town and get on with the job. Spell or no spell, he had work to do.

Sam was dressed and packed by the time he left the bathroom. The car was loaded five minutes after that. They checked out, and Dean drove them without a single wrong turn into the same spot in front of Cassie’s Pie and Coffee Shop. Dean prided himself on his awesome sense of direction, but even he grasped just how weird it was that he knew precisely which turns to take. They had been to the cafe only once. At night. In the dark. He shouldn’t have been able to find it so easily. Admittedly, he also shouldn’t have have known it was there in the first place. Magic was a bitch. Even the supposedly good kind.

Every ounce of understandable animosity leached away as he stepped through the cafe’s door. It was the smell. He stood, savoring the welcoming aroma, gathering the hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla. There was a cherry pie baking. He could tell.

Cassie was bustling around the shop, wiping tables, tending to the customers, and taking orders over the phone. She disappeared behind the swinging door into the kitchen and reemerged seconds later with a tray of pies. Half a dozen circles of perfection, golden brown and glazed with milk and egg wash. Dean watched with a smile as she transferred each one into place inside the display case, his eye sliding up to the proud turn of her mouth and over her shoulder to the small window in the kitchen door where a face was looking out at the cafe. A man, mid-to-late-thirties, blue eyes and a day overdue for a shave. When his gaze landed on Dean, his eyes went wide, and he ducked out of sight again. His hunter sense was tingling, but he pushed the feeling away. Demons and ghosts weren’t under every rock and behind every door. Sometimes a weirdo hiding in the kitchen was just a weirdo. Or maybe a dishwasher. Yeah, probably a dishwasher. A dishwasher with startlingly blue eyes.

“I was hoping I’d see you again. Not quite so festive today,” Cassie beamed and filled their mugs with coffee. “So this morning it’s cherry, ham and egg, banana custard, chocolate pineapple, or dutch apple. What can I get you?”

“Slice of each,” Sam said before the question mark even reached the woman’s lips.

“Okay then! And for you?”

“Apple,” Dean answered. After she moved off to the next table, he looked to his brother. “Dude, you don’t even like pie.”

“I like _this_ pie.”

“I think it’s drugged. She’s a witch.”

“She’s not a witch. It’s just good pie.”

“That’s what you want to--” A slice of dutch apple pie slid under his nose, blocking out all logical thought and making his mouth water. “That smells so…”

“I know.” Cassie smiled.

Across the table, Sam was ploughing through his slice of cherry pie. For a man who claimed to love the way the confection tasted, he was barely taking time for any of the flavors to register on his tongue. Dean refused to let that happen to him; he could down a burger in twenty seconds flat, but pie deserved better. He closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath, letting the air carry all the ingredients to his nose. It smelled like the home they had never known. Well, even if they had lived a normal life, it wouldn’t have included pies like this. Mary Winchester could do a lot of things, but baking certainly wasn’t one of them. Grilled cheese sandwiches were the height of her culinary ability.

While Sam was halfway through his third slice, Dean was just picking up his fork. The streusel topping gave way easily, a few crumbles falling away and rolling onto his plate. The apples offered just a touch of resistance, proof that they had not been cut too thin or been allowed to cook down into mush. The crust was flaky and just moist enough. No soggy bottom on this pie.

He lifted the forkful of pie and moved it deliberately into his mouth, swallowing the NC-17 noises he wanted to make the moment it touched his tongue. This wasn’t food. This was perfection. This was heaven.

Patience and moderation were not generally words in his vocabulary, but he managed both with considerable effort that morning. Unlike his brother, he didn’t gobble down the pie, though he desperately wanted to. Savoring it was more important than sating his need. He didn’t order a third slice, and he took his time working through the flavors of the banana custard he ordered with his second cup of coffee. He knew rushing through it wouldn’t have been as satisfying. Besides, he could grab another slice when they came back for lunch.

He froze as he stood, confused where the impulse to stay in town had come from. They were leaving. Breakfast, coffee, case. That was the plan. But the idea of leaving made him ache.

He glanced back at the old woman as she took up the phone and smiled into the receiver. She didn’t look as if she were up to some villainous, hellish scheme, but demons rarely did. Cassie wasn’t the only one with access to the pies, though. He looked at the kitchen door and saw the dishwasher’s face staring back at him again. Just as before, the man ducked out of sight the second he was made. His movement, while slightly suspicious, was more along the lines of someone caught doing something embarrassing and less that of demonic monster caught plotting. Maybe he was just a regular guy. Maybe he was just worried about being seen at the window instead of washing the dishes. Maybe Dean had spent too many years at this job and he was turning into one paranoid SOB.

There was one easy way to know for sure: Ask Sam.

“How you feelin’?”

“Like I shouldn’t have eaten five slices of pie,” Sam groaned, somehow managing to stretch his long frame out in the passenger seat. “So worth it. Let’s go before I think about getting another one.”

“You still want to leave town?”

He rolled his head to the side and frowned at him. “You want to stay? What for?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just… I don’t want to leave.”

“Dean, there’s a werewolf--”

“Yeah, I know there’s a freaking werewolf, Sam! I know there’s a job to do and people to save. I know there’s a whole country full of monsters to gank. Okay, fine. Let’s go.” He gripped the steering wheel and turned the key in the ignition. He backed out of the parking space and drove. He drove toward the edge of town, then took a sharp right into the parking lot of that god-awful grandma’s attic motel, gripping the steering wheel in his white-knuckled fists and grinding his teeth in frustration.

“This isn’t the highway,” Sam pointed out.

“I know!” he snapped. “I can’t leave.”

“I could drive.”

“I think I’d try to throw myself out the door just to stay here,” he said, not joking in the slightest. “I seriously can’t leave. Any helpful suggestion you might have would be awesome right about now.”

“The pie--”

“It’s not the pie, Sam. If it was the pie, you’d want to stay, too. This is all me.”

“I’m calling Madame Celeste,” Sam decided.

He huffed out an irritated, “Perfect.”

Dean checked them back into the motel while Sam paced the parking lot, talking to the pain-in-the-ass dingbat that had put her hoodoo love wammie on him. True love. How was pie his one true love? It wasn’t Cassie, that was easy enough to tell. He’d been in love. Not for very long, but long enough for him to know what it felt like. He didn’t feel even a hint of that for the old woman. It wasn’t the weirdo in the window. Although, he hadn’t gotten a decent or long enough look at the guy to know for certain. But the fact that he was a guy kind of made it an automatic ‘no’, didn’t it? Dean didn’t do dudes. Definitely not.

“Okay,” Sam called, snapping the phone shut. “Good news, this is totally normal. It will wear off, and you’ll be able to leave town.”

“There’s a big, fat ‘but’ in there. I can hear it.”

“But,” he sighed, “not until you figure out why you’re here.”

“Why? I know why. That bitch threw a spell at me. Did she tell you how to un-do it?”

Sam shook his head. “Can’t be undone.”

“Bullshit. Any spell can get undone.”

 “Not this one. You find your true love or die trying.”

“ _Or die trying?_ ” he repeated, volume growing with his anger. “Since when is this an _or die trying_ kind of thing?”

“Since you’re fighting it. Madame Celeste said you needed to open your heart and see the possibility that’s before you regardless of the form it takes,” he said in a weirdly accurate impersonation of the woman’s rasping, lispy voice. “So if you don’t want to die here, you have to figure out which of the people in this town is your true love. Bright side: it’s a very tiny town. Barely over a thousand people. That gives you a pretty small population to sort through.”

“Even smaller than that,” Dean disagreed. “It’s the pie shop.”

“You can’t have a business as your true love.”

“No, jackass, I drove right to that pie shop. If we can narrow it down to whoever was in the building both last night and this morning, we’ll know who it is.” At the strange look his brother was sending him, he hurried to add, “Not that I believe in this shit. True love. It’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, total bullshit. That’s why you’d sooner throw yourself out of a moving car than leave town.”

“Shut up.”

“Whatever. Who was there last night?”

“Just Cassie,” he sighed.

“Cassie? You mean the old waitress?”

“It’s not her.”

“I hope not,” he cringed. “Are you sure there wasn’t anyone else? Was there someone in the kitchen?”

Dean could only shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Let’s go ask.” He was on his feet in an instant, jacket in hand and feet heading to the door.

“If we wait until lunch, you can get more pie,” he suggested.

Sam spun around, eager grin on his face for a beat before he replaced it with a contemplative frown. “Yeah, that’s a really good idea. We’d attract less attention that way.”

“Dork,” he scoffed and dropped onto the bed. “So find us another job. That werewolf won’t take up too much of our time. We need somewhere else to go once we’re done in Connecticut.”

“Dean,” he said cautiously, “if this works, you’ll have someone here that you actually might love. You wouldn’t want to come back?”

“I don’t know what this is, but true love it ain’t. So I’ll go through whatever motions I need to until this hex is gone and I can get on with my life. The only reason I’d come back is for a job and maybe more pie. Call me crazy, but I’m sure every state in the US has at least one bakery with pies just as good,” he insisted, hating the way his gut clenched as if he were lying. He wasn’t. At least, he didn’t think he was.

“Whatever you say,” Sam agreed, though it was obvious that his real opinion was very different.

Lunch saw them at Cassie’s again, this time with plates of savory potato pie on the table in front of them. It had bacon. After one bite, Dean had decided that he was wrong. True love was a real and beautiful thing, and his soulmate was, in fact, this very pie. He relished every bite as he had with breakfast, again seeing the dishwasher watching him from the kitchen with wide eyes and pink-tinged ears.

“Can I get you another slice?” Cassie asked.

“Please,” Sam said through the last mouthful of his last slice.

“Actually, weird question,” Dean said, offering one of his many rehearsed smiles, this one apologetic. “Last night, when I came in, was there anyone else here?”

“Just me,” Cassie replied with a slightly false smile of her own. “I’m usually the only one here.”

“What about the creeper in the kitchen?”

At that, her smile became fixed well below her eyes. “Oh, him? Pay him no mind.”

“Yeah, but who is he?”

“Just my nephew. He helps in the kitchen when my arthritis plays up,” she said dismissively. “Let me go get you that pie.” She walked away with long, graceful strides, not a hint of medical impairment in her movements.

“Well, that wasn’t at all suspicious,” Sam commented. “How did you even know there was someone back there?”

“How did you not? I see him looking through the door every five minutes,” Dean insisted.

“Are you sure? I’ve been looking--”

“Dude, you’ve been shoving pie in your face. You didn’t see anything but your next mouthful. I’m surprised you managed to remember to breathe,” he scoffed.

Cassie hurried past, dropping plates onto their table and rushing off before they could ask any more questions. He would have been irritated at how closed-off the woman was, but the pie was too distracting. Dean savored the artfully layered potatoes, the sweet, sauteed onion, the crisp bacon. Looking up, he caught the dishwasher at the window again. He kicked Sam under the table, but by the time his brother managed to tear his attention away from his plate, the guy was gone.

“He’s a fast one. I’ll give him that,” Dean muttered and threw one last look back at the kitchen door as they left. There was something more than just paranoia and suspicion pulling him toward it.

“Are we coming back for dinner?” Sam asked.

“Dude, seriously? You _just_ ate.”

“And?”

“Never mind,” he sighed, wondering if this irritation is what everyone else felt when dealing with him most days. If it weren’t for the worrisome tether holding him to this tiny town, he would probably have been right there with Sam, gorging himself stupid on those heavenly pies. “We’ll drop in after closing. Maybe Cassie keeps employee files and we can see who the guy in the kitchen really is.”

“Good idea,” Sam said. “In the meantime, let’s see what I can dig up on her.” He pulled his laptop from his bag and started typing. Dean milled uselessly around the room, stealing glances over his brother’s shoulder. Every look at the computer screen showed more of the same, Cassie smiling and shaking hands with some judge, a ribbon, check, or trophy between them. “It looks like she’s won every competition in the state.”

“Blue ribbons all around, bully for her.”

“Blue ribbons, trophies, prize money,” he said, turning the laptop around to show the photograph on the screen.

He leaned in, squinting at the computer. “Is that a check for fifty thousand dollars?”

“Courtesy of Pillsbury.”

“Fifty thousand dollars? For a pie?” he balked. “Don’t get me wrong. I love pie, but fifty thousand? Hold up. Lemme see that.” Snatching the laptop from his brother’s hands, he spread his fingertips across the touchpad, enlarging the photograph. He zoomed and focused the image not on Cassie but on a figure to her left. To anyone else, he would just be one onlooker of many, but Dean knew better. He’d seen that face before. “Son of a bitch.”

“What?”

“It’s the weirdo in the window. Right there.” He jabbed a finger at the screen.

Sam studied the man’s photograph, mouth falling open as he muttered a quiet ‘huh’. Slowly, he undid all of Dean’s work, reducing the image back to its original size until the weirdo was barely visible among all the bystanders clapping for Cassie’s success. “And you noticed him there how?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying. I can’t even make out his face.”

“I said shut up,” Dean warned. “Find me something useful on Cassie.”

“She’s made up. Is that helpful enough?” he offered with a sarcastic smirk that was a little too knowing for his comfort level.

“What?”

“There is no Cassie registered in this county or the surrounding area. I found a Cassandra Harper, but she’s four; and a Cassidy Parnassus, but she’s dead. That’s it.”

“What the hell is going on around here?”

“No idea, but Cassie’s got a secret, and I’d be willing to bet it’s got something to do with that guy you can’t take your eyes off of.”

Dean sat and marinated in his thoughts for hours. A lifetime of dealing with things that go bump in the night gave him ample options on what secret that seemingly sweet old lady might be hiding. From the mundane tax evasion to the more sinister deal with a demon, Cassie could be hiding just about anything. What a lifetime of chasing monsters and skirts did not provide him with is a coping mechanism for the day he found out he might, potentially, possibly, maybe be attracted to a guy. Not that he wanted to jump the dishwashers bones or anything, but the guy was attractive. You know, for a dude.

“Hey,” Sam said, slapping his feet off the bed, “It’s nine. Pie shop’s closing.”

Without a word, he stood, checked the clip in his gun, and tucked it into the back of his jeans. The cafe was just eight minutes from their motel. By the time they pulled into a dark sidestreet, the sign on the door had been turned to read ‘closed’. The lights were being turned out one by one until only a single light shone through the window in the kitchen door. Seconds later, Cassie walked out from behind the shop and down the sidewalk. He considered following her, but he was being tugged toward the door by Madame Celeste’s magical hoodoo power.

“Around the other side,” Dean said, dipping into the alley alongside the building and following it to the back. There was a loading dock and a set of stairs up to another blue door. He saw no cameras, no security system, nothing but a single deadbolt. Small towns were good for one thing, at least. Still, he moved quickly, slipping his picks from his pocket and working the lock until the deadbolt retracted. The door opened into an office, small, organized, and unoccupied. “Yahtzee.”

“I’ll start looking for employee records. You scope out the shop,” Sam suggested in a low whisper as his flashlight swept across the shelf of meticulously labeled binders. “Oh, hey. Find some leftover pie.”

“Dude,” he hissed. “Are you sure _your_ true love isn’t pie?”

The office was dark, but he was sure his brother was grinning at him. Bobby was right. They were idiots.

The door from the office lead to a short hallway that ended with the double doors into the cafe. He found the utility closet and the employee bathroom on one side of the hall. On the other was the pantry, with row upon row of tall metal racks stacked high with sugar, flour, cases of chocolate, and other dry goods he couldn’t hope to identify. He wove through the racks toward a set of doors at the opposite end. Like those that connected the cafe to the hall, these were swinging doors with a small plexiglass window set in them to allow people to see and be seen. It was probably a safety thing, but it was also great for spying. From his side of the door, he could look through to the bright kitchen and watch as the weirdo in the window worked.

The man wasn’t a dishwasher. Or if he was, he had a side hustle as a baker. An experienced one at that. Dean might not have grown up attached to his mother’s apron strings, but he knew skill when he saw it. He knew this man was an expert. As he watched, he realized that this man was _the_ expert.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered and pushed through the door. “ _You’re_ Cassie.”

At his , the man turned, eyes wide. He swiped his nervous hands across the front of his apron, leaving a trail of berry filling that looked far too much like blood and gore for Dean’s liking.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the baker insisted. His voice was like gravel, rough from disuse or perhaps that was simply how he sounded. “You should go.”

 “Not without answers. Who the hell is that woman up front?” he demanded.

“Shirley. My aunt.”

“And you’re Cassie?” he said. “What the hell kind of a name is that for a guy?”

“It’s actually Castiel.”

He blinked and considered it. “Again. What the hell kind of a name is that for a guy?”

The guy smiled, revealing a set of dimples Dean wouldn’t have expected. “The old family kind.”

“Well, sucks to be you.”

“Could be worse. I have a cousin named Uriel.”

He didn’t quite manage to swallow the snort. “So, _Cas_ , why all the hiding? Why is good old Aunt Shirley getting all the credit?”

The man’s smile dimmed. “I.. It… It just sort of happened.”

“You _sort of_ let an elderly woman take over your identity and get her picture in the papers for winning every contest in the state. Yeah, I can see how that would _sort of_  just happen.”

“Look at me,” the man demanded, though it was completely unnecessary; Dean couldn’t take his eyes off him. “If you were the judges, who would you think Cassie was. Me? Or my aunt? She just came to support me for my first competition, and the judges assumed she was me.”

“So you correct them,” Dean said as if it was obvious.

“I honestly don’t mind. I don’t do very well with people.”

“Seem to be doing pretty okay with me.”

“You’re different. I like you.” Just like when he was caught staring, his eyes went wide and he hurried away, moving to the ovens. “You really shouldn’t be here. Take whatever you came for and go. Please.”

“I’m not here to steal anything. Well, maybe another piece of pie.” He leaned over the stainless steel surface Cas had just abandoned, eying the pies lined up on a cooling rack. All three looked identical and perfect. “Lemon Meringue?”

“No! Not those!” Cas shouted.

“Okay. Fine.” He took a careful step away. “Why not those?”

“I’m still working on them. The recipe isn’t right yet.”

“A new pie? How much will this one win you?”

The tips of the man’s ears went pink, but that was the only outward sign of his discomfort. “That depends on the judge.”

“State? Or are you expanding to nationwide contests now?”

“This one is more local.”

“County.”

The man shook his head. “No.”

“Not really fair entering the town competition, is it? Kind of makes you a ringer.”

“Even more local than that,” he muttered.

Dean frowned his confusion at the pie maker. The man lived in a town with barely over a thousand people. In a place that small, it didn’t get more local. Everything was local. Unless it was a pie made for a particular person. “Who’s the judge?”

Cas looked away, his ears going from pink to red. “You.”

“Me? Wait, you made me a pie?”

“I’m working on it,” he corrected. “It’s not ready yet.”

“Can I still try it anyway? I freaking love pie. I freaking love _your_ pies.”

His face tightened as he fought to find an answer. “It’s not really… Still working on it.” He sighed. “The one on the left.”

“Hell yeah, the one on the left.” Dean lunged at the table, snatching the pie up before Cas could change his mind. “Fork. I need a fork.”

“Just remember it’s a work in progress,” Cas reminded him as he held the utensil up for him to take.

Their fingers touched as he stole the fork from his hand, and he wasn’t in the least bit surprised by how much he liked the feel of the man’s skin beneath his fingertips. “You got it.”

Every inappropriate noise he managed to bite back in public came tumbling from his mouth in the quiet kitchen with only Cas to hear them. The pie was damn near perfect. Rich dark chocolate lightened with a barely sweetened whipped cream and a surprise burst of sweetness from the orange marmalade lining the crust. After a moment, a lingering bitterness hit on his tongue. Bitter marmalade. This was a pie filled with longing, sadness.

“It’s not reall--”

“Throw some bacon at it, and that’s my perfect pie,” Dean declared.

“Bacon?” Cas repeated.

“Everything’s better with a side of pig,” he said as if it were obvious.

“Bacon,” he said again. “Would that really make it perfect?”

“Tell you what. My brother and me, we have a job to do up North. Shouldn’t take more than three weeks. Why don’t we come back through when we’re done? See if I’m right about the bacon?”

The man stared at him a long moment before a beatific smile lit on his face. “I’d like that.”

“All right, three weeks. It’s a date.” He hadn’t realized what he had said until after the words were out. He opened his mouth to correct himself, but found he didn’t really want to. Not if it meant losing the sly smile on Cas’s face. “So pie got a name?”

“ _Strangers in the Night_ ,” he said. “Do you have a name?”

“Dean.”

“Well, Dean, I’ll see you in three weeks,” he said.

That was his cue to leave. He knew it. They both knew it. Still, he kept standing there, cradling the pie in his hands. Cas kept standing there with his intensely blue eyes just watching his face. It should have been incredibly awkward. Instead, he kind of liked it.

A loud, pointed cough broke their moment -- yes, okay, he knew they were having a moment -- and Sam was calling for him. “So can we hit the road now? Or do you need to kiss him first?”

“I’m not opposed to the idea,” Cas commented.

“Shut your pieholes. Both of you. You--” he pointed a warning finger at his brother “--get your ass back to the car. And you--” he looked to Cas and saw the man smirking at him, a dimple creasing his cheek “--I don’t even know what to do with you. Just go back to your damn pies.”

“See you in three weeks.”

“If I don’t die first,” he called back over his shoulder.

Sam was putting almost no effort into hiding his smile when Dean dropped into the driver’s seat. He handed _Strangers in the Night_ over to him. “Here.”

“So…”

“So?”

“He gave you a pie.”

“Wow, can’t get anything past you.”

“Like a whole pie,” Sam pressed. “For free.”

“You know the old saying. Give a man a pie, he eats for a day. Make a man fall in love with a pie maker, he eats for a lifetime.” He smiled and directed the Impala out of town and back onto the highway with only the barest tug in his gut back toward Cas.

“That isn’t how that proverb goes. You know that, right?”

“Well, it should be.”

Sam was silent only long enough to shovel a forkful of pie into his mouth. “Holy shit, this is fantastic!”

“Just wait. When we get back to town, he’s adding bacon to it.”

“Back?” he repeated around a mouthful of pie. “We’re going back?”

“Did you not hear me? Bacon. In a chocolate pie. Just for me. Fuck yeah, we’re going back.” Hell, if he could swing it, he’d find a way to go back to Silver Bell after every case, and not just for the pie.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of catching up on 13 years of Supernatural inside two months. It's my first ever SPN story, so do let me know how I did.
> 
> I'm giving thought to making this a series of loosely connected or completely unconnected one-shots based on proverbs. If you like the idea and have one you'd like to contribute, please share! The more obscure the better (I'm quite find of a Russian or Eastern European one about running from the bear only to meet the wolf).
> 
> Or sent by my Tumblr: [iamtarasoleil](http://iamtarasoleil.tumblr.com).


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